


Just Ordinary People, You And Me

by luninosity



Series: Holiday Fic [9]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Academia, Apologies, Best Job Interview Ever, Confessions, Fix-It, Future Fic, Happy Ending, Holidays, Implied Sexual Content, Labor Day, Love, M/M, Post-Movie(s), Reconciliation, Reconciliation Sex, Still Mansion!Fic Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-08
Updated: 2012-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-18 06:04:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Labor Day. A reconciliation story, post-XMFC. Discussions of happy endings and heroes. Erik makes a discovery, Charles makes an offer, and Erik has a very good work ethic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Ordinary People, You And Me

**Author's Note:**

> Title and opening lines from the Foo Fighters’ “Statues”, which I actually can't believe I'd not used before!

_you and I were two old and tortured souls  
repaired by a love of broken things_

Erik means to break into the room he recalls being Charles’s study, on the second floor. He knows that room so well. It used to feel like the possibility of home.

He doesn’t allow himself to think about finding a home, these days.

The wind shrieks at him, as he contemplates ancient brick and mortar. He could just fly—he’s gotten rather good at that, and he can’t help being a little proud—but for some reason, for this, he doesn’t want to. Wants to be Erik, if he’s going to see Charles, one last time.

He’s not even going to talk. He’s not here to talk. He just wants to know. He’d left Charles wounded on sun-scorched sand, unsayable words finally spoken aloud and burning the air, and the memory of a bullet falling out of his hand, etched into his heart.

He’d known Charles was hurt when he’d left. The guilt’s been gnawing away at his heart ever since, which is odd because he thought he’d left that particular organ on that tropical beach, broken. So he has to know how bad it was, needs to be sure that Charles is all right, will be all right. Charles can hate him, he can live with that. As long as Charles is alive enough to hate him.

He’s mostly got his upward route planned out, when he happens to glance at a first-floor window, and sees crackling firelight, and a shadow with unruly and instantly recognizable hair, and Erik stops breathing, momentarily, out of shock.

“Well, damn,” Charles says, and he sounds worn out, and frustrated, but he sounds like himself, like _Charles_ , and Erik wants to cry.

If he does feel a tear or two, on his cheeks, it’s the fault of the wind. It stings. Like whiplash. Disorienting, too. Why is Charles downstairs, at this hour, in what was previously an unused and dust-infested room?

He makes his way cautiously to the window. Peeks inside, feeling absurdly like an intruder. Of course, he _is_.

Charles is sitting at his desk—and it is his desk, down here for some reason—staring at a piece of paper and a stack of academic journals and a mug of tea, and there’s a fire burning away but it doesn’t seem to be offering enough company, because Charles appears very tired, and alone, and, fleetingly, much older than Erik’s ever seen him look.

He shuts those eyes—Erik can’t see the color, not from here, but knows that blue in the deepest spaces of his soul in any case—and scrubs hands wearily over his face and leans exhausted elbows on his desk, for a minute, and Erik says, completely involuntarily, “Charles,” and then flings a hand over his mouth but it’s far too late.

Charles opens his mouth. Closes it. And the blue eyes, the color of nothing else in the world except themselves, no other shade Erik’s ever found to compare, look profoundly shocked. “…Erik?”

“Yes?”

“Erik.”

“Yes.”

“You…why are you…no, never mind…do you want to come in? I’ve finished the tea but there’s a fire…and it’s kind of a cold night…”

“I know it is. Why is your window open?”

“I like the air. It reminds me that there’s a world outside. Erik…”

“You’re the only person who still calls me that,” Erik says, and then wonders why he’s bothered to say so, and also why he’s sliding in through Charles’s window to stand on the carpet when he’s really only meant to see that Charles is all right, and he has, and so now he should go.

“What are you working on?” he asks, instead.

“Oh…” Charles glances at his desk as if surprised to find it there between them. “I’m…working out training regimens, in fact. For the incoming students.” The fire snaps, and mutters to itself, in the pause.

“A school,” Erik says. “You’re starting a school.” There’s something nagging at his senses. Something new. Not the blatant wrongness of Charles having moved his study to the ground floor. Something else, a metallic weight that he doesn’t recognize even though he knows every bone of this house.

“The first term begins after Labor Day. Next week.” Charles hasn’t gotten to his feet. Only gazes at him, calmly, those eyes not giving anything away.

“And you’ll be a professor.” He can picture it, actually. Might be surprising, given the stories about Oxford and pubs and terrible pick-up lines, but there’s more to Charles than that. Erik’s seen it. Felt it. Knows.

“Yes.” Charles looks at him as if waiting for something else, and he has no idea what to do, what to say. That feeling’s always been a common one, around Charles. Charles, who flips around so many of his assumptions, makes him question himself, makes him believe that he might remember how to be happy. Even now.

That odd out-of-place metal keeps tingling, at the back of his mind. It’s around Charles, he decides. Is Charles sitting in a metal chair? Why? Why, when he knows that Erik could turn it against him in an eyeblink? Is it some sort of test? Or only a measure of Charles’s foolishly endless supply of trust?

He’s off-balance because that presence is distracting him. He finds words, almost at random. Tosses them into the air, and wonders whether that’s what these conversations have been reduced to, banalities and desperation and the unconquerable poverty of language.

“I don’t know much about Labor Day, I’m afraid. Aren’t you supposed to wear white? Or not wear white? Or something of that nature?”

Charles laughs. It’s not quite the laugh Erik remembers, but it’s genuine enough. “I have no idea. Though I don’t believe I wear white, in any case, so my choices as regards fashion shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I thought heroes were expected to wear white, Charles.”

“I suppose I’m not a hero, then.”

“Aren’t you? The good and wise Professor X, rescuing all mankind from each and every peril?”

Charles looks up at him, with that spectacular gaze, bluer than sunlight through sapphires. The eyes aren’t the same, Erik notices suddenly. He’d expected them to be as bright, as enthusiastic, as optimistic and naïve, as they’d been before. But they aren’t.

Of course they aren’t. He, Erik, has changed. It’s ridiculous to think that Charles wouldn’t’ve. But he feels an unaccustomed stab in the vicinity of his heart anyway at the realization.

When Charles says, very quietly, “No, I’m not,” the words aren’t an argument. They’re simply honest, in the face of Erik’s biting sarcasm.

Suddenly he hates himself even more.

“Charles,” he attempts, “I—”

“Why are you here, Erik?”

“Because I…” He doesn’t know. Or, no, he does know. And he can never admit it, because that would mean admitting he’s been wrong, about everything, and he doesn’t believe he’s wrong, can’t send all his hard-built fortifications crashing down with three impulsive words.

No matter how much he means them. Not when he has no reason to believe Charles will ever say those three words again to him.

Instead he says, “Come here,” because he wants to touch Charles, one more time, under the looming greyness of the sky, the electric tingle of promised storms in the air. Wants to feel the sparks that’ve always crackled between them.

He doesn’t expect the reaction that he gets.

Charles stares at him, and doesn’t move. Those eyes are absolutely compassionate, newly devastated, and even a little sad.

Eloquent lips move, shaping a word, something that might be Erik’s name, but no sound makes it out into the world. Charles swallows. Tries again. “Erik, you…I can’t.”

“You…can’t?” Or won’t? He wouldn’t blame Charles for not wanting to be touched, not after everything they’ve done to each other, everything Erik’s done to him. But this isn’t that. Charles wouldn’t look so heartbroken, so astonished, over something they both already know they’ll forever regret.

Charles _hasn’t_ gotten up out of the chair, he thinks, out of nowhere at all. Hasn’t repositioned a leg, or shifted that compact weight, since Erik’s arrival.

Without precisely knowing why, only the dim and horrible shape of what might be a reason, he finds himself very cold. The wind leaps in through the open window to tug at his shirt, and howls around the ancient stone of the mansion, bitter and frightened.

“I can’t,” Charles says, “I’m—I didn’t realize you didn’t—I never thought I’d have to be the one to tell you—”

“To tell me what?” There’s a strange sensation in his chest. Tightness. Crushing his heart until it cracks. He picks his way around the desk, carefully.

“Charles, did I—how badly are you—” And then he stops talking, because now he can see what he hasn’t been seeing until now: the metal he’s been sensing, around Charles, surrounding Charles, is a chair, yes. But not any random kind of chair.

A wheelchair.

“No,” he says, “no. _Please_.”

“It could have been worse.” Charles tips his head to one side, considering possibilities. His hair tumbles into his eyes, so familiarly. Erik’s heart shatters into smaller pieces. Broken glass, gouging into his veins with each fatal pulse-beat. “Might’ve been higher. Even more severed nerves. Or, you know, instantly fatal, and I am rather glad I’m still alive, so…”

“No,” Erik whispers again. It’s the only word he has left. The metal handles, on Charles’s desk drawers, rattle; window latches twitch, and a pen spins around and lands on the carpet, despairingly. And even though he doesn’t mean to, would never mean to, the wheelchair jerks, the smallest centimeter, in response.

Horrified, in anguish, he releases everything in the room with a single shuddering impulse. Needs to say something, needs to apologize, needs to pull his own splintering heart out and offer it to Charles if Charles might want that, but he can’t even breathe.

He’s on his knees, now, on the floor. He can’t be taller than Charles, not now, and anyway he’s not sure he can stand.

Charles can’t, after all. Not anymore.

The blue eyes, darkened by the shadows of the evening, gaze at him. Charles hasn’t moved, hasn’t reacted to the tug of power that’s pulled him a hairsbreadth closer to Erik. As if he might still possibly trust Erik not to hurt him.

“Erik,” Charles says, and, “it’s all right,” and, “ _Erik_ ,” again, more urgently, as though he’s concerned that Erik hasn’t answered. Charles doubtless _is_ concerned, because Charles cares about everyone, always.

Even Erik.

“I did this.” He can’t look at Charles, at the chair, so he stares blindly at the carpet instead. The luxurious and plainly brand-new fabric doesn’t even try to help. Nothing’s going to mute the insistent chiming of metal in his mind, in any case. “I did this—to you. You said so. On the beach.”

“Oh, Erik, no—I didn’t mean—”

“No, you were right, of course you were and I didn’t know—I didn’t know what you meant, how bad—but that doesn’t matter, it’s not important, I should never have left you. Or—oh god. I _did_ do this.”

“No, you didn’t, I was just in the wrong place, in the way at the wrong time, it was stupid and I—”

“I moved you. After.” He can hardly hear his own voice. He should’ve known better. He _had_ known better. Had spent too many years learning combat medicine, first-aid techniques, to forget. But he’d felt that impact, metal into Charles’s body, and he’d forgotten everything else in the world, for one second, for one second too long.

“You—no. That’s not why—they said nothing could have helped. Too much damage, for anything to have mattered. You didn’t do this, Erik, or if you did you didn’t do it alone, I was there too, and it was as much my mistake as it was yours, so look at me, all right? I’m still here.”

He can’t meet those eyes. Doesn’t deserve to. The fire snaps, loudly, seared wood breaking in two, and Erik nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Erik, stop being a melodramatic idiot and look at me, please.”

He can’t not look, then. Charles is asking.

“Erik,” Charles says again, “I’m still here. I’m not going to tell you I’m all right—I’m not—but I _am_ here. And so are you. Right now.” And holds out a hand, palm up, an invitation.

The firelight plays across fair skin. Licks gleaming color over those fingers, outlining shapes that Erik knows as intimately as he knows his own, or more so. He’s never touched his own body the way that Charles has touched him, with joy, with astonished revelation, with delight. No one else has ever loved him that way.

He lifts his own hand. Rests it over Charles’s waiting one. Can feel the flutter of that pulse, in Charles’s wrist.

The fire crackles at them again. They ignore it, for the moment, though the warmth is spreading through the room, steadily, cautiously, tentative as a newborn heartbeat, a first breath.

“Charles,” he says, “I am sorry.”

“I know. So am I.”

“No,” Erik tells him, “I’m _sorry_ ,” and tugs off the helmet with a single resolute thought. He’s never liked it anyway. Too confining. Stifling, in so many ways.

“Erik,” Charles breathes, and _doesn’t_ leap joyfully into Erik’s mind, doesn’t reach out. Hesitates.

The world stops spinning, or maybe that’s only in his head. Like an apocalypse, like a stilling of every eternal note, a silencing of sound throughout the universe. Charles _has_ changed. Because of him.

But that hand tightens, convulsively, around his own. And Charles asks, softly, not out loud, _Erik, may I?_

“Yes,” Erik says, _yes, yes, please!_ And he’s crying, now, the tears he hadn’t shed, after leaving Charles on the beach. The emotion he’d tried to tell himself had to be anger. _Please. I’ve missed you, I couldn’t feel you and I’ve missed you and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I love you and I don’t want to be alone and I don’t want us to be alone and—_

_I know. I know, it’s all right, I love you, I’m here._ Warmer than the heat of the fire, in his thoughts. The saltspray of ocean-black water and irrevocable first encounters. The wool of fingerless gloves, a hand in his, fingers entwined. The flavor of black tea and sugar and sweetness, in the mornings. Chess pieces and martini glasses and the first time Charles ever kissed him, standing in the doorway of the quiet study and leaning up all at once right in the middle of saying good night, the tastes of expensive vodka and brightness and sugared pineapple exploding onto Erik’s tongue.

Blue eyes and stubbornness to match his own. The desire to save the world from itself, even now.

_I love you._

_Yes. You do._

_I’m not leaving you again._

_I know. I shouldn’t’ve let you leave then. I should have asked you to stay. I should never have said—_

_I said things too. They don’t matter._

_They matter. We’ll probably argue rather a lot about those things. But this—us, together—this matters more._

_It won’t be easy. We’ll have to explain—they’ll hate me, and they should—_ Everyone will. Charles’s recruits. The Brotherhood. The politicians. He won’t think about leaving, can’t, not now, but he also can’t help the guilt. Anywhere he goes, he’ll bring all that wrath down on Charles, too.

_It won’t be easy_ , Charles agrees. _But whoever said happy endings ought to be given away for free?_

The fire chatters complacently, concurring. “Charles,” Erik says, aloud, because he wants to, to hear that beloved name and meet those eyes with his own, and feels Charles smile, understanding.

_Is this a happy ending?_

_It’s certainly happy. It isn’t an ending._ “I rather think it’s a beginning, don’t you?”

“A beginning…” _What about your school? Your plans?_

“Well…we could use a German instructor? Or self-defense, perhaps?” That’s a compromise, the first of what’s likely to be many, in the years to come. Erik knows it is: Charles tacitly admitting the need for such things. “We might have one or two openings, on the staff…” _Anything you’d like. Anything at all._

“I could probably manage that. Is there an application process, then? Should I provide you with a list of references?” He can compromise, too. They both can. He’ll train Charles’s students to protect themselves and their fellows but not to fight in anger, not to strike first, even when the opportunity arises.

He knows what consequences can come from those moments. Never again. _Did I tell you that I love you?_

_You did, but you can say it again. And I—you know I’ve never stopped loving you_. “I think perhaps a demonstration of your, ah, desire for the position might be in order, yes…”

_Charles…_ He breathes in. Runs his hand up Charles’s arm, rediscovering each one of those elusive freckles, observing the way muscles tense, not out of fear, at his touch. “Can you? I mean…you…this…” He doesn’t need to gesture at the metal that’s the unspeaking third party in the room. They both know what he’s asking.

“They’ve told me…” Charles stops. Bites his lip, embarrassed, and a memory flickers up between them: pamphlets, doctors smiling, patronizing and pitying. _In theory yes but I…I haven’t tried, I’ve been afraid—_

Afraid. Charles should never feel afraid. Or ashamed. Erik’s done that to him, too.

He lifts Charles’s fingers to his lips, in the ember-hued light. Kisses them, one by one, openmouthed. Trying to say everything he’s feeling, without words, with thoughts and lips and the gesture.

Charles breathes in, when Erik’s mouth wanders over his index finger. Erik considers this reaction, and then tugs that finger deeper into his mouth, swirling his tongue over fire-warmed freckles and thinking very hard about repeating that motion elsewhere, as well.

_Erik, I—oh, do that again!—that yes is no longer theoretical, I believe._

_Good._

Charles smiles, visibly and not. _Yes, you are._

_No._ Of the two of them, Charles is the good one. The one who deserves to wear white and be called a hero. He _is_.

“Erik,” Charles says, “you came back.” _And you’re wrong_.

“I almost didn’t.” Charles needs to know. Needs to recognize exactly how little Erik deserves this forgiveness. Has to understand. _I’m not wrong about you_.

“That’s not true. I can read your mind, you know.” Still smiling, crookedly. “You were always going to come.” _Yes, you are. I’ve made my share of mistakes, you know. We’re neither of us blameless. And I’m not the good one, and you’re not the villain, and we can both wear grey if we want to and grow old and stubborn together and I’ll love you forever and you’ll love me—_

_Yes!_

“Yes, then.” Charles looks at his hands, where they’ve remained wrapped up in Erik’s larger ones, the wetness of Erik’s mouth lingering across that finger, erotic and sweet and familiar and new all at once. “I love you. And yes to _that_ as well.”

“Demonstrations of my desire, I think you said?”

“I did. Bedroom?”

Erik ponders that for a second. Shakes his head. “Here.” And blue eyes shine, understanding, and Charles says “yes” again when they slide onto the rug before the fireplace, red and gold painting bared skin and eager hands with simmering color, and then shouts it one more time, in their heads, at the center of all the waves of pleasure, the serenity in the tempest, the heart of the storm.

The metal of the world, the desk drawers, the wheelchair and Erik’s forgotten helmet, hum around them, in the aftermath. Weaving a symphony in the night, like an embrace, keeping them safe. He can turn the helmet into something else, he thinks drowsily. Melt it down, reshape it, forge something new. He could throw it out or reduce it to scrap, of course, but he feels Charles object sleepily for the same reasons Erik’s already thinking, about scientific study and defensive potential and Erik’s own affinity for the metal, metal that’s touched him, known him.

He never wants to put it on again, but that’s not the metal’s fault. It’s a tool. Like Charles’s wheelchair, it’s another piece of who they’ve been and who they are and the life they’re going to build anew.

_Agreed._

_Listening in?_

_You feel comfortable._ Charles means that in more than one way, physically, mentally. He’s got his head on Erik’s shoulder, more or less; Erik’d started to worry about the lack of comforting softness there, and had grabbed his own discarded cape with one hand and turned it into a cushion, a few minutes ago. Charles had laughed, and repositioned them so that they were sharing the makeshift pillow, settled naked in front of the cheerful fireplace.

He rests his cheek against the top of that head, and breathes, and Charles nestles more closely into his arms. _Erik?_

_Yes?_

_I’d say this was an excellent job interview._

Erik snorts. Undignified, but it’s not as if either of them is going to send him away. Not now.

He can be that relaxed, with Charles. He can just _be_.

_I’m happy, too._

_I know you are._ He can feel it. The glow fills the entire room, tangible, in the air.

_Term starts after Labor Day…_

_Next week, you said_. If that’s what Charles wants to discuss, lazy and fulfilled and both of them sweat-sticky and elated from their exertions, then they can. _That gives us a week, in between._

_For lesson planning? Practice in designing curricula? Neither of us has ever done this before and—_

_For practice,_ Erik agrees, _absolutely. I think we should practice again. As evidence of my good work ethic, perhaps. As your newest instructor_. He rather likes the sound of that, in fact. He gets to work with Charles. To build something, with Charles. To be ethical, and figure out what that means. With Charles.

Charles considers this, entirely straightfaced, but the amusement’s obvious, leaking into shared thoughts. Outside, the wind scampers merrily past the window. _So…it’s nearly Labor Day and you’re planning to prove how well you understand the value of, er, working hard? Appropriate, I suppose_.

“I am,” Erik informs him, out loud, “utterly committed to working _hard_ , Charles, in case you couldn’t tell,” and, while Charles is trying to simultaneously laugh and groan at the terrible pun and kiss him everywhere, adds, silently, _and I am committed to this. To you. I will be here, with you. It will take work and it won’t be easy and we’ll be happy and I love you._

“Come here and demonstrate your commitment one more time, then,” Charles demands promptly, and murmurs _yes_ , and _I love you, too_.


End file.
